It's always changing. It's always beautiful. Even when it's scary.

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Being a spontaneous creature, drawn to magic like a child drawn to 'why', I often find myself the lone observer of the incredible. My early youth granted my ability to see that all of this..... all of it... is an illusion. The only thing that is real is your feeling about this moment; your love for this moment and for yourself. My early youth granted the freedom to see.... that I could die tomorrow. I could. And, my last breath better be magic. So, I have given my life over to the observation and admiration of the incredible. I am the observer of sunsets, of children licking ice cream from their pudgy arms, of butterflies and birds sending messages like morse code through the flapping of wings, of nervous couples wooing their first kiss....

I will begin my chronicle of random beauty.

November 3, 2007:
I am bored. I am broke. I live in a town where importance is measured by the price of your sunglasses and age of your manicure. I have neither and am grateful. I realize the opportunity granted to me by these conditions. Nature is a welcome friend in times of boredom and broke-ness.

It's 4pm and the sun is already getting sleepy, as it does in Arizona (I think if it just learned to throw less rays in a day it might hold up a lot longer than it does, but I digress.) Camel Back Mountain looks to be within arms reach from my apartment. I climb in my trusty Ford pickup and head toward the cool shade. I have discovered a cave and, after taking the last puff from my peace pipe, I gracefully scramble up, then down, then up the path toward my private grotto, hauling a bottle of water, a pack of cigarettes, a Tom Robbins book, a pad of paper, and a pen along the way.

Once safely sheltered inside the cool damp cave I find a few grooves in the wall, nestle myself into them, and am pleased by my ability to lie up the length of this stone wall and look out upon the grotto below. I allow my eyes to follow the ridges, the nooks, and crevices, imagining the tribes, the creatures, the stories that have inhabited this cool damp cave before me. The coolness of the rock has begun to seep into my skin and I notice the clouds are beginning to change; brilliant blue, electric pink, like banners of the gods proclaiming the beauty of change. A thought of gratitude enters my mind. I am grateful. My life has always been and will always be a string of moments like this. Moments like these.... these moments could make their way into a jail cell, should I ever find myself in such a predicament.

As if I had not experienced enough of Mother's beauty within that hour.... before this private thought of gratitude could reach completion..... my eyes were ripped from the sunset and thrust upon the wall above my head...... locked in horror by the sound of blood curdling screams growing louder and hungrier and more and more desperate until.... finally.....

A colony of nearly 200 bats funneled through one of my beloved crevices, 40 feet from where I lay up the length of the cool ancient wall. Their wings ripped through the silence, their hungry screams pierced my ears, a black ribbon of spontaneity flying through the air above my head, observed by my eyes, by my ears, by the goosebumps along my arms only, reminding me that... life... it's always changing... it's always beautiful... even when it's scary.............

I love bats.